The world had seemed to stop in that moment. That moment when she looked into the eyes of Swallowbane with Alistair pressing up against her legs - that moment when her heart had seemed to pause inside of her chest as she waited with bated breath - that moment when her jaws parted and a small exultation had left her lips, a cry of denial. It was the moment when every failing that she had ever made in her life had come back to bite her. To tear out her heart and pound it beneath stones and to rock her world, a world that was so full of guilt and loss and now joy and happiness and she was set adrift.
She had stood there for an undetermined amount of time just staring off into the distance with glazed pale eyes while her son had tried in vain to get her attention. Natu did not even know that tears had begun to leak from the corners of her eyes and drip down her jaw onto the top of her son's head. She did not know that her body was frozen because her heart was in such torment and her mind in such disarray. It all coalesced in her into one scalding moment as it clawed its way up her throat and she flung back her pate to let forth a chilling and choked cry of anguish and sorrow that seemed to go on and on until it sucked everything from her. Her breath, her desire, her emotions.
Indeed, when the cry finally faded away and the quieted world began to slowly wake from her haunting tune, she gasped for breath. Choked on it and blinked furiously against the stain of green and blue and gray mixing together because she couldn't see. She did not stay to comfort Swallowbane despite how difficult his task had been. Only by instinct does she scoop up Alistair in her mouth with her gentle maw and she sets a grueling pace back to Asteraia with her heart thumping, pausing, thumping, pausing. The world blurs - she doesn't pay attention to where she runs because she cannot see and her mind is so confused as the tears continue to drip and drop.
Paws stumble and she yanks her head up so that Alistair does not get harmed in her movements, ever the protective figure, until she finally stumbles across the threshold that is Asteraia. And there she ever so gently plants Alistair on the ground and collapses on herself, wheezing and coughing and sobbing into her paws. Her body screams for oxygen - the run had been too much accompanied with her hysteria and her under-weight figure. Sven, her beloved Sven. He said to tell you, mom, that he was sorry he was in the way. How fucking dare he, she thinks, her horror turning into something rage filled and then abruptly back to sadness.
"Why?" She whispers. "I always.... loved-him," she gasps to the air, scrunching her eyes shut against the hateful glare of the sun. She had been on her way to fetch him to come see his brothers and sister, to ask him to stay with her. Yet he had left her because he had thought she had forgotten. She had failed him; he had never been in the way. She had always brought these things upon herself. She should have done more - she knew that. Should have been with him, drug him with her, spent more time with him. Now it was too late.